The present invention is related to an optical member having an antireflection film, more specifically an optical member having at least one mixture film on a substrate composed of a synthetic resin.
Conventionally, in using a synthetic resin as a substrate, has been known the optical member having on the aforesaid substrate an antireflection film which decreases surface reflection. The optical member having the antireflection film has been applied to and practiced in cameras, video cameras and the like. Further, the synthetic resins applied to the substrate include acryl resins, polycarbonate resins, etc. It is particularly noted that in the optical member having the antireflection film of which substrate is composed of the synthetic resin, the synthetic resin has less heat-resistance than optical glass, and as a result, it is impossible to employ the means of vacuum evaporation. Accordingly, there have been problems such that no good adhesion between the synthetic resin substrate and the antireflection film is obtained and a crack is liable to be formed on the anitreflection film.
Generally, it has been known that as a reason that the crack is liable to be formed on the optical member on which the antireflection film is formed, stress remaining in the antireflection film is one of causes. In order to make the formation of the crack less liable, as described, for example, in Optical Thin Film (H. A. Macleod, Japanese version translated by Shigetaro Ogura et al., page 458), there is provided a method wherein a few percent of an impurity is intentionally put into the film for the decrease in the stress in the film which is used as an antirefelction film. Furthermore, in more detail, Pulker studied the relationship between the stress of an optical thin film and the fine structure of the film, and obtained good agreement of the measurement results with those obtained by the calculation based on a model. It is also described that the presence of a small amount of the impurity affects remarkably the stress; furthermore, the impurity is concentrated to the boundary of crystal grains in the film having a prismatic structure; as a result, pulling force between grain boundaries adjacent each other is decreased to reduce the stress, and furthermore, the stress of a magnesium fluoride film is reduced approximately to 50 percent by the presence of a small amount of calcium fluoride such as about four mole percent.
On the basis of the above-mentioned approach, is disclosed an optical member having an antireflection film composed of a mixture film. For example, is known an optical member having an antireflection film composed of a mixture film consisting of ZrO.sub.2 and TiO.sub.2 or ZrO.sub.2 and TiO.sub.2 (refer to Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection No. 181902/1992).
However, when the optical member having the antireflection film composed of the mixture film is kept at high temperatures (for example, 70.degree. C.), the crack is formed on the antireflection film and no sufficient effect for preventing the formation of the crack has been obtained.